Author: kalebey

Final Reflections

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My posting evolved over the course of this semester from what I thought I should be interested in relevant to this class to pursuing my actual interests from the basis of this class.

I started with a dutiful report on the Doomsday Clock the afternoon after Professor Sample told us about it. While intriguing to notice, this post is at its core an explanation of an event through listing the Clock’s changes since its making. I wrote other Sightings post this last week of May. The one I have posted so far explores how and why different countries have different rules about media. Not only more engaging and learning-focused, this post arose from something I noticed in my life rather than a following of statements from class.

With this ideological growth has come representational challenges. The more abstract an idea, the more difficult it is to write about clearly. I became conscious of this differentiation through authoring my Comparative Media Project, in which I struggled to find a balance between exposition and analysis. However, my learning evolved alongside my work this semester in other classes: all were writing-focused, and I worked as a Humanities Fellow. Though a challenging transition, my writing grew in analytical depth through this class. I believe a good part of that has to do with the pattern in which we learned. Our first work, like the Snapchat assignment, was engaging and fruitful but straightforward, as opposed to later assignments like Haunted Media in which we had greater freedom to build off our then-supported understandings.

I explored a variety of topics in my posts, again growing in depth.

I feel my fourth blog post, “How Can You Come Back If You Never Left?”, is one of my best. Here, I was able to include several aspects and subjects of analysis into a cohesive narrative that examined my learning through my interests and findings.

Big Brother: Controlling Life Through Tech Around the World

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 After participating in several international exchanges/programs growing up, I find myself with way too many apps downloaded onto my phone to keep in touch with the friends I made. Different countries have different approaches to technology; I’m interested in how national legislations and ethoses shape civilian lifestyles and psychologies.

     Foremostly, large scale attention paid to technology seems to be motivated by security and by people in power wanting to preserve that power. People are much less likely to use media/tech they know as corrupted or corruptible. Given the recent phenomenon of “fake news”, those around the world have rushed to confirm the veracity of the sources they use to stay connected to what’s happening around them:

An explanation of fake news in media and its effects

I recall North Korean leader Kim Jong Un being reported to have discovered unicorns a few years ago. This discovery was obviously fake, but underscores the power of media in North Korea. Citizens must believe or present belief in whatever these parties tell them or else risk suffering or death. So technological news functions as a mechanism of control; authorities can control others through controlling their exposure, and they can test the functionality of this measure through looking at how well the can convince others of even the bizarre.

Mass control through technology is not only attempted by governments, but it does happen to various extents among nations. A stark example exists between the United States of America and mainland China. Americans have (as far as the public knows) currently unfettered access to knowledge and connectivity online. Some are tracked rather insidiously, though, according to cases like that broken by Edward Snowden in 2013. In China, meanwhile, censorship is more overt. Unlike elsewhere, Chinese citizens cannot access sites like Facebook and Instagram, among the world’s most popular by far, in their country. There are myriad wonderful Chinese people, as there are in any grouping of people– it is only the mechanism of controlling lives through technology that shines forth here.

To keep this post to an appropriate length, I will only mention surveillance and psychology concerns (I’m reminded of course of George Orwell’s 1984 as well as of Cory’s Doctorow’s Homeland) to address these in extremity). It is often confusing and awkward to delve into limited medias, but such must be accomplished for humans to achieve their fullest potentials and be as fully educated as each deserves.

Citations:

Quinn, B. (2012). Unicorn lair ‘discovered’ in North Korea. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/30/unicorn-lair-discovered-north-korea [Accessed 3 May 2019].

Aljazeera.com. (2015). Web extra: Edward Snowden, the US, Taliban and China. [online] Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2015/09/web-extra-edward-snowden-taliban-china-150905102614117.html [Accessed 3 May 2019].

Observatoriodemediosicos.wordpress.com. (2019). América Latina | Observatorio de Medios UCA. [online] Available at: https://observatoriodemediosicos.wordpress.com/tag/america-latina/ [Accessed 3 May 2019].

Repair as Mitigation

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Jackson’s essay focuses on and differentiates not only the technology available but also the psychology involved between the twenty-first century and the past. In particular, he focuses on our sense of disposability regarding matter, to an extent including commodified other people.

He states that we perceive our world as artificial or temporary, a phenomenon I agree with and believe has occurred as long as consciousness has existed. One must continuously supply oneself with water, air, doos, etc; the inevitable competition encourages self-centeredness and the consistency reinforces it. This instinct would have lessened over time, as most people (though not all) at least usually have access to their basic needs. Now, we compete for what we want, a distinctly socioeconomic shift.

For instance, phones are a social signal that are temporary, arbitrary, and require upkeep/repair. Yet people usually wish to purchase entirely new (therefore “better”) phones and only seek repair due to the cost. “Repair is about space and function,” Jackson writes, “…inherits an old and layered world…above all, repair occupies and constitutes an aftermath.” It manifests the pace of society. It’s worth noting that that society is more singular than ever before, in large part due to technology.

 

Repair bridges our fulfilling our actual needs and wants and fulfilling those internalized/brought on through society with the mediums of media and technology. We feel compelled to not just own but show that we own (therefore being able to afford much, therefore being more desirable). However, most of us cannot afford every single thing we want for any reason. Thus, repair exists. It also occurs to me that sentimental value can influence the attitude/repair/replacement of items. This concept has presented an obstacle for some: companies like Apple purposefully limit the extent to which one can reuse and repair their technology in order to force continued purchases and updates.

 

How Can You Come Back If You Never Left

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Our recent readings and discussions have focused on the “resurrection” of dead celebrities; I find this premise intriguing particularly in how it contrasts living reactions to the deaths of the non-famous.

I’m reminded of when we watched the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back. We respond to events, like deaths, in frameworks of their relativity to ourselves. Martha in the episode, for instance, had a much more visceral reaction to losing Ash than, say, her sister did. Celebrity is built upon boosted amounts of people feeling connected to a distinct individual. The boundaries of that connection are not or perhaps cannot be designated except by societal opinion case-by-case, leading to transgressions.

Modern production, distribution, and media only encourages the relationships people feel they have with celebrities who usually do not know them individually. So, disruption happens most definitively when the famous person dies. The physicality of their relationship per fan never actually existed; it therefore cannot be taken away. If a family member dies, closure occurs in that those left behind cannot interact with that person anymore. When a celebrity dies, a fan can still watch movies, listen to music, buy memorabilia,etc. made by that person, just as they did before the death.

Thus, no boundary has been created, and celebrity deaths lose their grounding as applied to fans. It was odd when Martha, in Be Right Back, resurrected Ash’s voice and eventual body (sort of). Listening to David Bowie’s music after learning of his demise, though, was regarded as normal and in fact encouraged in reality. That example specifically goes further: Bowie’s posthumous music releases in 2016 garnered much higher listening rates as well as slews of comments about degrees of devotion to him and his work, attempts to physically connect with or to connect more than others with Bowie.

The absence of physicality in celebrity-fan relationships, as opposed to mere person-to-person relationships, fictionalizes them. I’d be interested whether more toxic behavior happens related to celebrity deaths or to more intimate deaths.

kalebey

My Haunted Media project stemmed from the question of how our modern world would respond to past/historical deaths. We have focused in class on how responses, or at least the mechanisms of carrying out those responses, have changed as digitization pervades. I focused on Princess Diana, whose sudden death in 1997 elicited worldwide mourning as the internet increased digital access exponentially; I chose this case due to that context as well as that of Diana herself. Since her romance with royalty, Diana lived under constant observation, tempered by wide perception of her as a narrative rather than as herself, contextualizing her death as the finale of a story. These phenomena in mind, I developed a fan website of Princess Diana, of which a surprising amount exist in reality even today, and designed peoples’ reaction, through the website, to her demise in real-time.

Press coverage of Princess Diana happens today, showcasing a fascination with her, and tends largely toward her appearance and her emotional problems, objectified elements that I pursued in my site through the inclusion of a “Shopping” page to link visitors to where they may purchase clothes like Diana’s, and in what news prior to that concerning her death I included. Every source I could find explaining Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles painted him unflinchingly as a villain. While I have no intimate experience with the Charles and so cannot say what role he did or did play in driving the split, neither do most of these legitimate commentators. Victimizing Diana by framing him as an aggressor maintains an innocence ascribed to Diana that seems largely to extend from her gender. Barbara Creed wrote in her book The Monstrous Feminine that much horror has emerged from “…the inability of the male order to control the woman whose perversity is expressed through her rebellious body,” (Creed 34). The woman, in this case Diana, needs to be acted upon rather than active to preserve patriarchal integrity. Thus, I described her throughout my site in passive terms, those that would please others interacting with her as opposed to benefitting her in any potential ambition of her own. The obsession with her appearance became a “Shopping” page, in which visitors to the site can find clothes for purchase like those Diana has worn. This element ties into the consumerism of digital culture, too, as the presentation of everything happens in a context of whether or not those concerned have, want or need, or can obtain each thing. Further, I delved into the concern over Diana’s sex life. Prior to carrying out research, I did not know Diana had divorced from Prince Charles or dated other men since; people seem invested in maintaining her as a chaste, traditional woman, continually calling her “Princess Diana” and badmouthing both Charles and Diana’s subsequent boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed. Some believe that Diana was pregnant, despite not being married to him, with Al-Fayed’s child at the time of her death. Prior to the fatal car crash, there had been no public speculation about another Diana pregnancy. Controversy about it heightens hysteria in reaction to her death; the idea may have been purposely leaked—or created—by news outlets. I incorporated the anxiety over Diana’s childbearing into my website’s news post after Diana’s death, a list of conspiracy theories (of which many exist) trying to make sense of the situation. These proliferations and the placement of them on my site, after the previous article confirming Diana’s death closed with a note that no or little more news will be published here, indicate several things. First, humans cannot simply escape their emotions, responses to news like that of this death, and so on by wishing to do so, and we crave fame and belonging. Meghan Garber wrote in her article Enter the Grief Police how, especially as facilitated by digitization, mourners reach out to each other and showcase how sad they are, (Garber). I addressed such a notion in my “Bulletin Board” page, on which the comments of website visitors tend, now, toward performative grief. Diana’s gender definitively structured reactions to her demise. Significantly, this structure reminded me of that concerning Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Diana functions as a character for the public to project onto, as many celebrities do. Modern civilization, specifically British in this case, exists symbiotically with a socioeconomic patriarchy threatened by changes of agency. In Hamlet and in Diana Spencer’s instance, the jeopardy or perceived jeopardy of feminine acting with male qualities (Ophelia’s literal loss of chastity, Diana’s love life outside of her ex-husband and the resulting suspicion of her unwedded pregnancy) prompts obsession, (Shakespeare). Royals have died before. Even women tainted both by divorce and by closeness to the English royal family, like Princess Margaret and Wallis Simpson, have died before and not garnered the lingering response that Diana has. Her appearance, stylized and real, has perhaps contributed to the especial attention paid to Diana, as her sudden death preserved her as young and beautiful—again, like Ophelia. I paid attention to the discrepancies of opinions concerning Diana versus her contemporaries or predecessors in how I designed my website. I used pastel and complimentary colors, as well as traditional fonts, to convey a sense of conservatively pleasing aesthetics; further, I chose pictures of Diana that emphasized the demure, ladylike persona ascribed to her. I analyzed Diana’s objectification in my construction of the worldwide event her death became.

Next, I focused on making the website realistic. This phase of research included reading more news coverage from her life and afterwards and visiting several, real Diana fan sites to guide organization and aesthetics; I also instituted features like terms and conditions, a privacy policy, and relevant filler text to introduce pages. Though I had and have no attention to create an actual mourning place for Diana, I wanted to make it as indistinguishable from one as possible, save for designating it as my Haunted Media Project at the top of the homepage in case anyone outside our class does stumble onto the site. Otherwise, I did, in fact, find myself creating a real place of mourning. Do motivations change results? I worked as a character besides myself in an attempt to explore what those obsessed with Diana (or any dead celebrity) might feel; thus emerged a tightening of tone throughout the website. I littered text with reminders that any post must be Diana-related and offered opportunities to subscribe, as well as detailed my Shopping page. While I do not ship out anything purchased from the Shopping area, users of the site go through every motion of doing so, from adding items to a cart, inputting their billing and shipping information, and receiving confirmation. My focus in this area derived not only from the cult around Diana’s gender but also from the existence of these sales in our society. By that, I mean that humans treat appearance as signifiers of status; most style themselves for reasons other than basic protection from natural hazards. The London Spectator newspaper published as early as 1922, decades before Diana, an article describing legal battles over “…what a woman who lives ‘in Society’ (sic) ought to spend on her clothes,” (Spectator). The unnamed author allows that women- specifically women, bringing up gender once again by their shunning to mention male aesthetics of performativity- may feel compelled to express emotions through their clothes, but, in doing so, ultimately sacrifice usefulness to the world, the exact definition of which this author never states but implies pertains to bettering the lifestyles of the poor. The British royal family, while generally viewed positively or at least with ambivalence in today’s world and Diana’s world, represents privilege and socioeconomic unfairness bluntly. Perhaps the family’s members’ involvement in philanthropy aims to mitigate that image? Much of Diana’s 80%+ approval rate arose from her closeness to citizenry, propagated through her work “…as president or patron of over 100 charities,” (Diana Award). I reflected directly in the “What Really Happened” news post on the concentrations of power regarding the British elite, how Diana differentiated herself from them, and how they simultaneously cast suspicion (however irrational) and absolved of engineering malevolence like Diana’s death onto the royal family. An inordinate amount of conspiracy theories exist about the crash which ended Diana’s life. Most, if not all of these frame either the royal family or other wealthy and powerful individuals as culprits. When mourning Diana, to what extent is someone actually mourning the perceived loss of overt class separation? Our class has discussed how people can feel they know, even intimately, celebrities who they probably have actually never met. This commercialism of people, then, prompts our desire to emulate them, encouraging everything from the phenomenon of influencers to sales of merchandise to basing trends on those set by people in power. Humans want to become as close as possible if not simply to become those they idolize, and the mechanism to achieve this end in modernity lies in buying and selling. Thus came my Shopping page, geared toward customers who want to dress like Diana. Finally, I edited my news posts with an eye toward the tones of real super-fans who I read writings from and watched videos of. I distinguished between the roles of the website creators/moderators and of visitors who participate with my website, their level of participation marked by whether they subscribe. Save for my name and the title of this project listed on the upper left part of the layout, I tried to and, I believe, strongly succeeded in making a realistic mourning website—if not a real mourning website.

The internet had but recently begun to spread in accessibility at the time of Princess Diana’s demise. As such, the world concentrated their collective grief, emphasized by the narratives of this specific woman, into other media and manifestations, including multiple, physical memorials. Further digitization has furthered connectivity between fame, economy, emotion, and socialization; I analyzed how this has changed grief through creating this website for my Haunted Media Project.

Works Cited

Creed, Barbara. “Woman as Possessed Monster.” The Monstrous Feminine, www.dropbox.com/s/d2ado1o12n3azy1/Creed – Woman as Possessed Monster.pdf?dl=0.

DiNuzzo, Emily. “The Truth Behind the Theory That Princess Diana Was Pregnant at the Time of Her Death.” Reader’s Digest, Reader’s Digest, 18 Feb. 2019, www.rd.com/culture/princess-diana-death-pregnancy-theory-truth/.

Epstein, Rachel. “8 Gorgeous Royal Wedding Dresses to Shop for Your Big Day.” Marie Claire, Marie Claire, 21 May 2018, www.marieclaire.com/fashion/g19754996/royal-wedding-dresses-to-shop-now/.

Garber, Meghan. “Enter the Grief Police.” The Atlantic, 20 Jan. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/enter-the-grief-police/424746/.

Kelly, Ben. “How Princess Diana’s Death Was Broken in the Pre-Social Media World.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 30 Aug. 2018, www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/news-princess-diana-death-pre-social-media-world-a7917366.html.

Mallinson, Harriet. “Prince Charles: What REALLY Happened on His Mediterranean Honeymoon with Princess Diana.” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 9 Jan. 2019, www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/1069189/prince-charles-princess-diana-honeymoon.

Macfarlane, Jo. “Book Revealing ‘Explosive Truth’ about Diana and Dodi Axed.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 13 Aug. 2017, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4785272/Book-revealing-explosive-truth-Diana-Dodi-axed.html.

McHugh, Catherine. “Remembering Princess Diana: How the People’s Princess Changed the World.” Biography.com, A&E Networks, 31 Aug. 2017, www.biography.com/news/princess-diana-death-legacy.

“Princess Diana.” Princess Diana Legacy, dianaslegacy.co.uk/.

Russell, Jenni. “Diana Saved the Queen.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/opinion/sunday/princess-diana-britain-monarchy.html.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Dover Publications, 1992.

“The Best Style Moments of Princess Diana.” Southern Living, www.southernliving.com/fashion-beauty/princess-diana-style.

“THE FETISH OF CLOTHES.” The Spectator Apr 15 1922: 455. ProQuest. Web. 27 Mar. 2019 .

“Top 10 Suspicious Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Princess Diana.” Terrific Top 10, 25 Sept. 2018, terrific-top10.com/2018/09/24/top-10-suspicious-circumstances-surrounding-the-death-of-princess-diana/.

Death: The Final Frontier

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The articles read for this Wednesday’s class designated the phenomenon of technological grieving, and its responses like grief trolling, in binaries. Male/female, white/non-white, strong/weak, communal/isolated, and traditional/new feature here, not to mention the obvious digital/analog and dead/alive. Though these simplifications are often faulty, they remind of a more, for lack of a better word, primal framework.

Entering a new situation makes one aware of their vulnerabilities. Further, they must adapt toward function in order to survive or thrive there. While these changes could and often have been physical, like expansion of human civilizations, they also include abstract developments– like the internet and social media. So, too, death exists as a change that we fear (or at least think about) nearly universally often because we cannot adapt to, as far as history’s and the current world go.

So, as humans feel we have become comfortable and safe in the digital world, we use it as a tool to mitigate the effects of that other challenge, death. Megan Garber in particular wrote about the ancientness of our tendency to gather when faced with the death of someone. For millennia, versions of funerals and wakes have prompted communing to cope with death.

The digitization of those rites has made them less visceral and therefore less threatening. Too, death in a modern, American context of course still looms, but lacks the constancy it might otherwise. So, people begin to respond, or are perceived by others to respond, to death in a superficial and ultimately meaningless way nowadays. Throwing together a social media post, much less commenting on or liking one, takes less time, energy, and effort than organizing or participating in an analog memorial. The nature of social media emphasizes the performance aspect of grieving– I’m also reminded of the draconian dress and behavior codes for mourning Victorians–and in doing so clouds the motivation of mourners. Is that person posting out of real sadness, or to show off how sad they are? (The answers interconnect, as per the previously-mentioned instincts of humanity to seek out each other for comfort, but can be construed as immoral).

Thus, grief trolls emerge. I find their premise and actions abhorrent, but believe their motivation may stem from a distrust of the changing, vulnerability-inducing landscape of dealing with death.

Battlefields: Postmodern Tropes and Technology in Men Against Fire and Battle Royale

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Governments in the Black Mirror episode Men Against Fire and the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale use violent technology to subvert populations into obedience, thereby maintaining their power. Such premise sounds dystopian, but has and continues to be used in reality, encouraging questioning of where the viewers’ own ideologies came from. The pattern of media horrors representing those of reality’s frameworks has a long precedent, and it emerges clearly in Black Mirror episodes like this one especially and Battle Royale, as systemic

At no point in Men Against Fire, unlike most other horror-tech narratives, do most characters perceive any defect to their technology. In fact, the MASS implants shared across the mostly-military characters do enable good: soldiers can communicate with efficiency, scout out dangers without having to physically approach them, and even program fulfillments for one another like “a good night’s sleep”. However, rookie protagonist Stripe discovers that MASS literally changes perception and that use of this innovation enables manipulation on a, well, massive scale. This case highlights Nazi-like ideology as MASS and implied other propaganda condition people to perceive those deemed undesirable (the disabled, foreigners, homosexuals, and so on) as monstrous creatures worthy of naught but death, rather than as fellow humans. The tactic has a storied past. The American World War Two effort, in addition to its enemies, boosted commitment through production painting its enemies as a savage, less-than-human mob:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pearl-harbor-japanese-americans_us_5a283fb8e4b02d3bfc37b9f6

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky asserted in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Economy that media “mobilize(s) support for the special interests that dominate state and private activity” through “’cleansing’ information from the real world to leave only the ‘residue’ which is acceptable to established power systems,” (Pedro-Carañana). Creating a division between one group, especially a minority, and others diverts support to majority, authority-approved sources. A woman victimized by MASS describes in Men Against Fire how she and her son (allusions exist throughout the show about up-keeping a “pure bloodline”) were progressively dehumanized. Again, the process of these happenings mirrors reality: subtle negativity leads to registration which leads to persecution. Saul Friedlander chronicled in his book Nazi Germany and the Jews a timeline of Europe’s turning against Jews in the 20th century, beginning with increasingly broader propaganda and definitions of wrongness before proceeding to registration and, ultimately, to violence, (Friedlander). This timeline matches almost exactly to that revealed to Stripe. More recently, news and other sources of information or entertainment have been used to spread so-called “fake news” for agendas in North Korea, Russia, and even, debatably, the United States. The rise of social media increased that practice, with politicians themselves blogging and posting (Bjola). Drastic change of any kind incites hostility or fear, especially that which impacts the lives themselves of individuals. Yet, gradual change can afford space to extinguish resistance. It is worth noting that military/government motivations do not always involve such insidious ends as in Men Against Fire, but some do. Technology like MASS, or, in our reality, similar social and connective medias have enabled hate, violence, and death, not to mention the mechanical tools invented for fulfilling these goals.

Battle Royale revolves around a differentiation between young and old, a less permanent boundary one would not expect to erupt into violence due to its fluidity. In fact, at least one sympathetic adult character appears. However, the grown-ups of Battle Royale’s dystopian Japan fear the autonomy of their juniors and so employ psychological and technological means to institute their titular control mechanism. Each year, a supposedly randomly-selected school class of children undergoes drugged transport to a fortified island, then must battle to the death with resources ranging from paper fans to machine guns, until the government permits a single winner/survivor to leave. This obviously results in the deaths and traumatization of children, but more generally functions as a deterrent for youth questioning and misbehaving. That is, a troublemaker would fear their and their companions’ inclusion in the Battle or perhaps some other, awful alternative. Tasha Robinson wrote in her article read in class, “Modern Horror Films are Finding Their Scares in Dead Phone Batteries” that the postmodern world presents greater challenges to create isolation in horror, a needed feature because access to the larger world increases the potential to defeat or escape aggressors immensely (Robinson). The government in this movie accomplish separation by holding the Battle on an island accessible only by air or by high-grade boat. The children, of course, possess none of this transportation. In order to obtain one, and next to use it in escaping, the characters determine they must hack the military’s technology, isolating their captors while connecting themselves to navigation, etc. That plan showcases the neutrality of tech: only the manner of its usage deems it positive or negative. Battle Royale’s antagonists, for instance, use innovation to very gorily punish those who defy them, contain threats, and track those under their power (and to literally explode the heads of those who attempt to remove their trackers), while the children harness it to fight back. The horrors they face may seem themselves isolated to the island—one can survive them by winning aka killing everyone else, according to the promoted narrative–, but the first and final scene of the movie exhibit the falsehood of that distinction. This film opens with the announcement of the winner/survivor of the Battle directly before the one chronicled afterwards, in which an elaborate motorcade travels through throngs of rabid media, who represent these happenings to the public through live filming. Such context mires the Battle, especially as a manifestation for the brutality of the government, which otherwise receives little direct exposition, in a false righteousness and, perhaps even, desirability. Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Be Soft Rains” showcases how deviation from normalcy creates horror in itself; Battle Royale explains the fluidity of normalcy, that culture creates routine but does not instinctively adhere to any besides the basic needs of eating and drinking, sleeping, socialization, etc. as needed (Bradbury). Just as the Smart Home of Bradbury’s postwar landscape comes to demise through insistence of maintaining outdated norms (though, as a potentially inanimate being, it may have little agency to deviate), only through changing an imposed status-quo can any of the children survive their experiences without having become traumatized government tools. Conversely, the movie’s final scene features the two survivors/escapees, Noriko and Shuya, attempting to next smuggle themselves out of the country they are now fugitives of as Shuya instructs viewers via voiceover to “run for all you are worth!” before credits slowly appear onto a photograph of most of the people who died onscreen previously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAgjU9gxTB4&t=134s%29

The end indicates that neither Noriko and Shuya, nor any other living in the movie’s world, nor, in fact, the audience in the real world have not truly escaped their oppression. The horror does not self-contain on an island, to a specific government or country, or even to a finite movie. It pervades throughout, a consistent motivator to remember the atrocities all around us (the sequel movie finishes with a similarly tiny group of traumatized survivors with an unstable future). Finally, the Japan shown in this last scene of the film, as well as in some flashbacks, clearly earns the title dystopia for the overt manipulation, violence, and cruelty of and to its inhabitants. Yet, it looks remarkably like that and like civilization in general today: urban and rural areas, grade schools, grocery stores, traffic lights…the relative indistinguishability from our own setting cements the dissolution of isolationist confines. Altogether, this movie urges its audience to become aware of their own horrors through depiction of those same or like horrors brought to an awful extreme.

This episode and movie differ by 16 years, country and continent, background and plot, and techniques of production. While Men Against Fire uses a genocide storyline ripped from history to illustrate the effects of propaganda n instituting pain, oppression, and brainwashing in a postmodern situation; Battle Royale cautions against the harnessing of power and corruption via postmodern invention. They share, however, the motif that propaganda influences it audience unduly and has but gained ubiquity as technology advances. No impossible monster appears in either, only extensions of the world as is. Only the dark side of human nature, or ambition, magnifies through digital resources. These watchings implore greater attention to how humans use what they create.

Works Cited

Bjola, Corneliu. “The Ethics of Countering Digital Propaganda.” Roundtable: Alternatives to War, 1998.

Bradbury, Ray. There Will Come Soft Rains. 1950, www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury.pdf.

Chomsky, Noam, and Edward Herman. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Economy . 1988.

Friedländer Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. Phoenix, 2014.

Fukasaku, Kinji, director. Battle Royale. Toei Company, 2001.

Robinson, Tasha. “Modern Horror Films Are Finding Their Scares in Dead Phone Batteries.” The Verge, 2018.

Verbruggen, Jakob, director. Black Mirror: Men Against Fire. Black Mirror, 2016.

Yam, Kimberly. “These Anti-Japanese Signs From World War II Are A Warning Against Bigotry Today.” The Huffington Post, 2017.

What We Want: Violence in Media

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Our recent readings and discussions have all linked death in media with violence, which does seem the rule in genres like horror or action. However, this same prevalence indicates that humans want to watch or experience violence rather than death. Why?

I’m reminded especially of a scene from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, in which the then-established pattern of audience directing the story through making choices becomes disrupted by the presentation of essentially a single option:

The therapist character, in a position of authority or at least supposed wisdom for both the protagonist and for the audience, introduces that mere exposition or conversation is boring in media. Viewers then respond to the query “do you want more action?” by selecting either “Yeah” or “F*** Yeah”. At least one of these choices prompts a surreally elaborate fight scene, something that would (presumably) never happen in reality.

Movies, books, and so have received criticism for unrealisticity, but here draw attention to the notion that that may be their ultimate appeal. We want to experience things that we do not or cannot experience realistically. Living things are rationally, instinctually against ourselves dying to the extent that we want to avoid it happening to even semblances of us. We’re fine with killing others or watching them die, but it’s difficult to think of media in which the protagonist or audience stand-in dies without somehow resurrecting (aka “real death”). Violence– or for that matter, love, invention, and so on in certain cases–, though, allow us to explore possibilities and fantasies physically inaccessible. We cannot attend Hogwarts, but we can read and watch Harry Potter do so while speculating what may happen to ourselves in the same universe. We can, however, have a conversation with another person, as protagonist Stefan does at first in the Bandersnatch scene. So, Black Mirror anticipates that “F*** yeah,” we do want more action.

The Wayward Daughter(s)

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Regan of The Exorcist is young, bright, and plagued by an absent father. Marjorie of A Head Full of Ghosts navigates financial trouble and an increasingly fractured family, while her sister Meredith must cope with the same destruction she is too young to understand. Finally, Sidney in Scream, which I analyzed for my Postmodern Horror Snapchat Story Project, still has not recovered from the rape and murder of her mother a year ago. Each of these heroines suffers from a direct possession, illness, or serial killer, but also from more abstract concepts that ground them in a reality to best frighten audiences.

Humans fear loneliness and instability. The most introverted of us crave grounding in the worldly context; doctors Baumeister and Leary described that “…a need to belong is a fundamental human motivation and…can provide a point of departure for understanding and integrating a great deal of…human interpersonal behavior,” in 1995, (Baumeister, Leary). This yearning can manifest officially in marriages and the forming of families, who become legally and, often, instinctively loyal to each other. Such bonds can of course function positively, but can also prompt or hinder the resolution of crimes: only thirty percent of the juvenile victims of sexual assault, for example, agree to tell and testify against their related aggressors (Psychology Today). In Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the remaining live members of a family keep up their usual routines despite knowing one among them must have killed the rest of their clan.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/matter-personality/201210/why-dont-child-sex-abuse-victims-tell

So, the prevalence and significance of familial ties explain how jarring Regan, Marjorie, Merry, and Sidney must find their scenarios. It also, though, speaks to the effect on the reader or viewer. We discussed in class how watching horror lets us experience thrills without the long-term consequences. That notion rings true– my reading A Head Full of Ghosts will not dissolve my family. However, the dissolution of families like our own in these books and movies introduces or exacerbates that the same fate might befall our’s. Exposure to an idea over and over again can cause its internalization (in fact, the motive of the killer himself in Scream, is that fictional characters would respond to his troubles by murdering). Observing the fall of the Barretts then, for example, reminds us that no family, however nuclear or seemingly perfect, is ultimately safe.

Another similarity between the afore-mentioned pieces of media lies in their feminine anxiety. The demon of The Exorcist apparently identifies as male and infamously compounds Regan’s purity through making her say expletives, perform objectively filthy actions, and masterbate with a crucifix. Most people have negative reactions to female masterbation itself, if they even acknowledge its existence, not to mention the perversion of the sacred regarding the crucifix. Her mother undergoes increasingly intense trauma as her daughter changes through the demon. Intriguingly, the demon Marjorie claims inside her is female. That difference supports that Marjorie is merely faking her predicament, as she spends much of her exorcism scene and the pages leading up to it pointing out the self-interest of the Father Wanderly and his underlings, Dr. Navidson, her father, and the show’s producers, all mostly male. Finally, the male killer in Scream harps on his maternal abandonment, prompted by his father’s affair with Sidney’s mother. Rather than consider the intricacies of that development, especially his father’s wrongdoings, Ghostface takes out his anguish on women, killing men only as part of his larger schemes to attack female victims.

Altogether, these and other horror narratives prey on audience anxieties: we shame, exalt, fear, and demean women within a male-designed context, and we deeply fear being alone. These are the real horrors, and the violence and supernatural occurences in The Exorcist, A Head Full of Ghosts, and Scream merely manifest them.

2019 Doomsday Clock Update

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I noticed that the Doomsday Clock has been set for 2019 the same as in 2018, two minutes to midnight. This NBC report first explained the Clock’s background, as we went over in class, then talks about its function in the contemporary world. It struck me that the Clock no longer corresponds to just nuclear threats, but also to environmental degradation, terrorism, and so on. This shift showcases the challenges that may or may not face us at any given time, as well as what we do or do not prioritize. The decline of the Cold War has decreased how much we worry seriously (as a public; the government may obviously pay greater attention to such concerns) about nuclear threats. However, these still exist, somewhat from Russia but also most publically from North Korea. While not approaching the level of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the nuclear threat is less than when the Clock was made. Yet the Clock stands five minutes closer to midnight/apocalypse than it did during the Cold War. Adding emphasis is the fact that Clock has been changing more often and more dangerously:

A history of the past few decades’ Clock changes

The news video lists “bioterrorism”, specifically, as a modern concern– Americans are more familiar with physical terrorism, like bombs or murders. Is bioterrorism a more major threat than we generally treat it as? That phenomenon could make sense with advances of science, especially since some bioweaponry has been developed, used, or attempted for use (like the 2001 anthrax scare). However, the proximity to Doomsday most likely stems most from the third category mentioned, human-caused environmental decay. We often hear about humans’ detrimental effects on the world. That it might present more danger, though, than the nuclear threats of the 1950s-80s did places the peril of the environment in alarming perspective. We like to think that the effects of deforestation, drilling too often for oil, and other practices will not occur for a long time.

Yet the narrator of this report cautions that the clock represents only our perceived closeness to the end of the world. That premise prompts wondering who (which scientists with what credentials, who were selected how?) assesses how the Doomsday Clock should be set each year. They certainly seem respectable, but, all in all, the Clock encourages further investigation of its related elements, still achieving its goal.

 

“Doomsday Clock.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan. 2019, thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/.

News, NBC. “The Doomsday Clock Has Us At Two Minutes To Midnight | Mach | NBC News.” YouTube, National Broadcasting Company, 24 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMhRPlgL1-U.